Data on Community Groups

• 180 groups (128 in June 2013)
  • 177 CGs
  • 3 BGs
  • About 50 are active (estimate)
• 24 new groups launched since TPAC 2013
• 38 groups do not require patent commitments
• 20 groups published reports
• 11 Final reports
• 127 groups have one or more chairs
• 53 groups do not have a chair

Data on CGs - participation

• 4111 participants (2882 in June 2013)
• 195 Member organisations (177 in June 2013); top three:
  • Tencent: 85 participants
  • Google, Inc.: 47 participants
  • Mozilla Foundation: 45 participants
• 1419 non-Member organisations (1061 in June 2013); top three:
  • European Commission: 9 participants
  • University of Leipzig: 8 participants
  • University of Zaragoza: 8 participants

2014 outreach data

30 CG Chairs took the 2014 CG survey.

• Status?
  • 6 ongoing and nearing completion
  • 16 ongoing and far from completion
  • 2 have completed their work
  • 6 inactive
• Spec work or discussion forum?
  • 17 work on producing specification(s)
  • 11 are a discussion forum
  • 2 are both
• Transition?
  • 10 have a specification to transition
  • 10 do not expect to transition
  • 10 discussion forum groups did not reply

Transition Scenarios

We are still learning about transition scenarios. Here are some considerations and recommended steps around transitioning work to a Working Group:

• Report handed to existing group
  • Is the work in-scope for an existing W3C group? (If not, group can recharter with new scope.)
  • Does the group have sufficient capacity to complete the work, including implementations?
  • The CG/BG can speak with the Group Chairs and Team Contacts to gauge interest and feasibility.
• New group formed
  • The CG/BG can develop a draft charter for the work (the Team provides a template) and shares with Community Development Lead.
  • The Community Development Lead identifies the right person in W3C management who can take the charge to the rest of W3C management for discussion.
  • Statements of support from CG/BG participants lend weight to the proposal.
  • The Director proposes charters to the W3C Membership.

If W3C starts a Working Group in a given area, non-Member organizations interested in the work should consider Membership.

Recent Transitions

3 groups transitioned since the June 2013 CG update:

• Report transition: The final report of the SVG Glyphs in OpenType CG was adopted in January 2014 by ISO SC29 as part of the third edition of Open Font Format (the ISO version of OpenType™), and is expected to become an International Standard in 2015.
• Report transition: The Web Media Text Tracks Community Group handed WebVTT 1.0 to the Timed Text Working Group in March 2014. The CG continues to work on the WebVTT specification to address new features and collaborate with the Timed Text WG on any bugs found with the submitted specification.
• Group transition The Core Mobile Web Community Group evolved into the Web and Mobile Interest Group.

Responsive Images Community Group (transitioned last year): In the past six months, work on responsive images has converged on two complementary solutions that are seeing rapid adoption (srcset attribute and picture element).

Transitions - near-term

4 groups are in various stages of transition:

• [UbiWeb]
  • Automotive and Web Platform Business Group: Poised to recommend to W3C to start planning an Automotive and Web Working Group. In May, the group published a draft Business Group Report of Vehicle Information API, intended to provide a consistent approach to Web application development across all automobile manufacturers.
  • Second Screen Presentation Community Group: W3C Team sent an advance notice that it is currently considering working on a charter for a WG on Second Screen Presentation.
• [T-and-S] Federated Social Web Community Group and Social Business Community Group may continue to provide important input to the new Working Group and Interest Group in the Social Activity that is under AC review.

Transitions - longer-term

6 groups intend to transition without a schedule for doing so:

• [INK]
  • MicroXML Community Group: The group expects to bring work to the W3C XML Core WG, which would require rechartering (next opportunity in 2015).
  • CSS Selectors as Fragment Identifiers Community Group: The anchoring work is related with the recent workshop on Web Annotations.
  • Customer Experience Digital Data: Team discussions initiated last year, currently on hiatus.
• [T-and-S]
  • ODRL Community Group: The team needs to figure out possible next steps.
• [UbiWeb]
  • Speech API Community Group: The W3C Web Speech Working Group, under AC review in 2014 did not receive sufficient level of support. The team invited the interested parties to revisit the proposal. The groups expect to continue its activities and bring the results to the HTML WG and/or the WebApps WG.
  • Web Payments Community Group: The group was instrumental in the March 2014 Web Payments Workshop, is ongoing and far from completion.

W3C leveraging Community Groups

• TV Control API Community Group: created in the wake of the fourth Web and TV workshop on Web & TV Convergence, to draft an API for web apps to access and control channel data.
• Web of Things Community Group: has been documenting Web of Things use cases. [Upcoming W3C Workshop on the Web of Things, 25–26 June 2014, Berlin, Germany.]
• Ubiquitous Application Design Community Group: set up in the wake of the Model Based UI Working Group closing, as an open forum for continuing discussion, and to maintain the specifications produced by the MBUI WG.
• Web Payments Charter Development Community Group: convened by the W3C Team after the Web Payments Workshop, to develop the charter of a steering group which will aim to formulate a strategy and roadmap. A new IG could launch in Q3 2014, after commitment of a critical mass of payment industry players.
• Revising W3C Process Community Group: set up to propose improvements to the formal processes, relayed to the W3C Advisory Board, which currently manages that process. It developed a proposal for a new Recommendation Track that is currently under review by the W3C Advisory Committee for adoption in the W3C Process Document.

Community and Business Group challenges - Survey

There were few challenges that the 2014 survey highlighted:

• Signing the Contributor Agreement for groups that do not require patent commitments is cumbersome.
• Getting an organisation's legal department to review the agreement is time-consuming.
• Confusion in the community about Community Groups vs. Working Groups.
• Perceived lack of guidance for Community Groups that want to move their specifications to the Rec Track.

Community and Business Group challenges - Other input

Related input from elsewhere:

• An AC-forum discussion about a proposal to create a new WG to continue work started by a CG raised some general questions about the process used to evaluate such proposals. Art Barstow created a document listing considerations to evaluate a proposal to start a new Working Group at the W3C.
• In his W3C Advisory Board nominee statement, Soohong Daniel Park wrote:
  

  "we think Community Groups need a deeper review. Many CGs are inactive or never produced valuable results. Some CGs are used to produce spec work, that is sometimes considered by implementors as "good enough", resulting in a weak or even absent transition to WG work."

• In AC-forum, David Singer asked which groups are useful/effective/productive:
  

  "I think we’ll need to do some ‘pruning’ here at some point so that the list of CGs represents viable (or new) CGs."

Community and Business Group operations

• Once a Community Group has been launched, participants may continue to work indefinitely (see grounds for closure).
• Proposed and current groups are listed on the W3C Community and Business Groups homepage (also announced via the public-new-work mailing list and archive and via an RSS feed).
• Some Community Group Reports are Specifications; deliverables may be anything, including documents, test suites, tutorials, demos, code, discussion, etc. (see Report Requirements).
• A Community Group may continue to exist after a Working Group has been chartered.

Community Group Development activities

• Yearly assessment of Community Groups (started in 2013)
• Redesign of CG site with improved usability (nearing beta)
• Templates
• Other Desired improvements, including:
  • "CC-only" (non-patent) groups
  • Chair selection process
  • Improved interface for non-members to join
  • Review language used in CG Reports, styles

Community Group Development New Tool Wish List

Based on the June 2013 AC Meeting CG breakout feedback:

• Discovery: Enable AC reps to find groups for employees of their org
• Heat-maps: Data for CG integration with W3C Domains
• Activity Tracking: General monitoring and assessment of groups' health (scalability challenge)